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Wednesday, July 22, 2026

The Sensory Wuthering Heights

On Wednesday, July 22, 2026 at 1:55 am by M. in , ,    No comments
An alert for tomorrow, July 23, at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
In-person 2pm  Brontë Space at the Old School Room
Online 7:30pm Zoom

In chapter three of Wuthering Heights, Mr Lockwood’s encounter with Catherine Earnshaw’s ghost is shaped by the sensory. What he thinks is the tapping of a fir branch famously turns out to be Catherine’s ‘little, ice-cold hand’ at the window. 
In this Thursday talk, Meg Duell and Claire O’Callaghan explore the senses in Wuthering Heights and discuss Duell’s award-winning article ‘No Atom Rendered Void: The Aerial and Alchemical Enchantment of Wuthering Heights’, winner of the Brontë Studies Early Career Essay Prize for 2025. Together, they will explore how Emily Brontë uses air, weather, and atmosphere to turn windows, mirrors and gates into ‘portals of enchantment’, creating the unique conditions for the earthly and spiritual worlds to meet. 

Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Tuesday, July 21, 2026 10:16 am by M. in , , , ,    No comments
CrimeReads lists some "LGBTQIA+ Crime Fiction To Check Out This Summer":
Catherine Friend, The Lost Brontë (Bywater Books, August 18)
In this Gothic-inspired novel about love and forgery in Brontë country, young Lilianne Loxley finds herself in service at the large country estate of Lord Bexton. She is devoted to the works of the Brontë sisters and is soon drawn into a conspiracy to write a ‘lost’ novel by Emily Brontë for Lord Bexton, a plot that can make or destroy fortunes. The house is haunted by lemon-scented ghosts and a portrait on the wall has eyes on her. Only the love of a housemaid named Wren disturbs her in a pleasant way. When Lily discovers a surprising connection between the Brontë family and Lord Bexton, she is forced to make dangerous decisions. You don’t have to be a Brontë fan to be drawn into the atmospheric story. (Queer Crime Writer)
Midway through Brontë: The World Without, three sisters clasp one another in what initially appears to be a passionate embrace. Look closer: they are actually wrestling. They chase and tug at one another, fighting over an envelope like rowdy, fussy children. Sibling love may last forever, sibling peace barely a heartbeat.
That contradiction is the richest vein in Helen Juvonen’s final production as co-artistic director of Guild Festival Theatre. One of three sisters herself, Juvonen has chosen Jordi Mand’s domestic drama about perhaps the most famous siblings in Victorian literature, the Brontës. The result is an intermittently compelling family portrait that focuses on the fierce quarrels that can run alongside abiding tenderness. (...)
One of the play’s most perceptive achievements is its layered portrait of the sisters’ relationship. In the Brontë household, rivalry and self-doubt live side by side — a tension most affecting in Anne. Overshadowed by her sisters and overlooked by critics, she carries the quiet pain of feeling herself the lesser talent. As Emily complains about hostile reviews, Lucia exposes Anne’s hurt with quiet, clear-eyed restraint as she quips in a puff of breath, “That’s better than being forgotten.”
Juvonen’s farewell finds the human pulse beneath the literary legend: three women elbowing for room at the same table, set against one of Toronto’s most evocative backdrops. If downtown feels like a page crammed with noise and haste, this destination offers a change of edition.  (Alessandro Stracuzzi)
Community Impact announces an upcoming local student production of Jane Eyre, The Musical by Gordon &/ Caird:
‘Jane Eyre’
Lone Star College-Tomball invites community members to attend its musical production of “Jane Eyre,” which tells the story of the governess’s life from childhood through adulthood. Tickets will be available for purchase at the door.
Aug. 27-28, 7 p.m.; Aug. 29, 2 p.m and 7 p.m.
Ticket prices TBD
30555 Tomball Parkway, Tomball
Book Club Chat interviews the author MJ Soni:
Heather Caliendo: What are some of your favorite novels?
MJ Soni: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: In my debut mystery, The Masala Chai Mystery Club, my protagonist, librarian Neeti Shah, is inspired by Jane Eyre. And that part is autobiographical. I read Jane Eyre when I was about fourteen, and it was life-altering for me. I was surprised at how independent Jane was, and shocked when she refused to marry Rochester when he made an unacceptable proposition to her. It was the first time I learned what true courage and agency really mean.
The Telegraph & Argus reviews a recent concert by CMAT in Halifax:
Her haunting cover of Kate Bush's Yorkshire-inspired Wuthering Heights was another standout moment, made even better when she led a call and response on who could do the spookiest callout to the moors beyond Halifax. (Jess Blissitt)

An AI recommends historical romances in BookClub, including Jane Eyre. Mental Floss list some of the authors included in Ernest Hemingway's personal library, including Emily Brontë. More local newspapers cover Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever events: TopSouth Now, Greenfield Recorder, Great Yarmouth Mercury, Eastern Daily Press. ..

1:17 am by M. in , ,    No comments
The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 51, Issue 3, July 2026) is available online. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts: 
‘A hot July day’: Editorial Introduction
pp 211-213  Author: O'Callaghan, Dr. Claire

Research Articles

Rediscovering Anne Carus Wilson
pp. 214-229 Author: Burstein, Moriam Elizabeth
Abstract: 
This article recovers the work of Anne Carus Wilson (1787–1859), who was the wife of William Carus Wilson (1791–1859), the model for Mr Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre (1847). Anne Carus Wilson has been ignored in accounts of the Brontës, despite her known involvement in the Clergy Daughters’ School. Now virtually forgotten, Carus Wilson was a successful children’s author in her own right, whose output during the 1820s and 1830s included short fiction, a novel, multiple devotional works, periodical articles and a children’s biblical card game. This article argues that analysing her surviving work clarifies how she and her husband may have disseminated their Evangelical Calvinism to students at their various schools, even as she sought to model forms of Christian activism for British children in general.

‘Let me try to wait His will in silence’: Silence and Faith in Jane Eyre
pp. 230-244  Author: Lewis, Ariadne
Abstract:
Silence in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) is often unfavourably contrasted with the power of speech and ‘telling the story’. However, the novel’s silences are much more complex than simple signs of oppression or roadblocks to self-expression. Silences in Jane Eyre reveal Jane’s spiritual growth and a narrative of transformation in her relationship with God and Rochester. Jane initially reads God as silent in response to her prayers, which reading shapes her understanding of divine providence and plan for her life. She sees a similar sort of silence reflected in her earthly relationships, and these experiences of silence shape how she uses silence towards those around her. However, when the ‘mysterious summons’ breaks God’s silence, Jane comes to believe that there is a providential purpose behind the silence of God, allowing her to redeem and repurpose silence in her relationships.

‘Amusing you with an old world story’: Relating to the Past in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
pp.  245-257 Author: Walters, Elijah
Abstract:
This essay revisits the topic of narrative structure in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by exploring similarities between Helen’s diary and John Bunyan’s The Life and Death of Mr Badman (1680). As Brontë’s novel shifts from the Gilbert frame narrative to Helen’s Gothic diary, she introduces her topics of reform through an interpolation of Bunyan’s seventeenth-century fiction. Brontë’s careful interaction with Bunyan’s text makes The Tenant of Wildfell Hall not simply a commentary on Victorian society but also a transformative engagement with literature from the past.

Why Trees Matter in Wuthering Heights
pp. 258-275 Author: Defant, Ivonne
Abstract:
Trees are not a remarkable feature of the Brontë moors—trees are indeed rare–yet their very dearth is rife with significance in terms of both gender and ecology. This article proposes that the trans-corporeal interplay between trees and Catherine Earnshaw and her daughter, Cathy, in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) foregrounds ideas of transformation, connection and preservation. The episode of the fir tree in Lockwood’s dream introduces the reader to Catherine’s past and therein the past of the moorland: ancient forests that once blanketed the landscape participating in its formation. Drawing upon an intersection between matrilineality and the ecological history of the landscape centred on the arboreal, this article demonstrates how Brontë interweaves the identity of the moorland with the identities of mother and daughter. While Catherine’s arboreal embodiment allows Cathy to retrieve the spirit of the mother and of the place, trees enroot the self of Catherine, Cathy and the land, interconnecting and enriching them.

The ‘Pets’ of Edward Fairfax Rochester
pp. 276-288 Author: Pope, Liam George
Abstract:
In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), Rochester’s dog, Pilot, introduces Jane and Rochester, essentially setting into motion the main plot of the novel. To use Ivan Kreilkamp’s term, Pilot eventually becomes something of an anthroprosthetic seeing eye dog for his owner when he is partially blinded following the fire at Thornfield Hall. Anthroprosthesis refers to an anthropomorphic being that fits the role of a living ‘prosthesis’ for an injured or otherwise disabled human character. This article argues that Jane, upon returning to find Rochester at Ferndean Manor, willingly replaces Pilot in his capcity as Rochester’s ‘guide dog’, becoming an anthroprosthetic human guide dog parallel.

Special Interst Article

The Earliest American Reactions to Wuthering Heights: Some New Findings
pp. 289-297 Author: Evans, Robert C.
Abstract:
This Special Interest Article describes and quotes from over thirty ‘new’ responses to Wuthering Heights that were published in the United States immediately after the novel was first printed there in 1848 and in several later decades of the nineteenth century. These newly collected responses indicate that the book was at first strongly criticised, whereas other reviews offered occasional positive comments, although even these were often mixed with censure. In the decades following the novel’s initial American appearance, it was still sometimes described negatively; however, by the 1870s, opinion had clearly shifted, with Emily Brontë praised for her bold genius. Taken together, these reviews illustrate the vagaries of literary interpretation and the ways in which some books, initially condemned by their earliest reviewers, can eventually be fully accepted into the canon of great literature. 
Book Reviews

Anne Brontë and Lord Byron: Lost Echoes of Influence
pp. 298-300 Reviewed by Cook, Peter

Violence and the Brontës: Language, Reception, Afterlives
pp. 301-303 Reviewed by Curzon, Rachel

“Wuthering Heights”, a Film Directed by Emerald Fennell, Warner Bros., 2026
pp. 304-306 Reviewed by Seijo-Richart, Maria

The Edinburgh Companion to the Brontës and the Arts
pp. 307-309 Reviewed by Stoneman, Patsy

The High Flight: 50 Poems Inspired by Emily Brontë’s Hawk
pp. 310-312 Reviewed by Van Der Meer, Carolyne

Monday, July 20, 2026

The Clare Champion talks about the Charlotte Brontë mural in Kilkee by Marcus Vallboehmer. As the newspaper explicitly forbids quoting directly, here is an AI summary. Pity:
A new mural of Charlotte Brontë has gone up on the strand-line walls of Kilkee beach in Co. Clare, marking the town's real historical link to the novelist: Charlotte and her husband Arthur Bell Nicholls spent a week of their honeymoon there in 1854. The mural was commissioned by Kilkee Civic Trust, the group behind the town's four-year-old Brontë Festival, with sponsorship from Creative Ireland Clare. It occupies one of four wall spaces on the strand that were once used for alley or racquet ball — a game associated with actor Richard Harris, who was known for playing it there decades ago, though the tradition has since faded.
The artist behind the piece is Marcus Vallböhmer, a German-born muralist based in Farrihy, between Kilkee and Doonbeg, who moved to West Clare in 2023 with his Swiss wife after buying a farmhouse there. He described the Kilkee commission as an unusually demanding one, given the exposed conditions — weather, tides, and constant public visibility on a working beach — though he said passersby frequently stopped to admire the work and offer encouragement as he painted. (AI summary from the original by Sharon Dolan D'Arcy)
Los Angeles Times interviews Ewan Mitchell (Joseph in Wuthering Heights 2026... and Aemond in House of Dragons):
Between Seasons 2 and 3 [of House of Dragons], Mitchell filmed Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights.” He had previously worked with the filmmaker on 2023’s “Saltburn,” for which he auditioned using a Harold Pinter monologue. For “Wuthering Heights,” Fennell simply texted Mitchell asking him to play Joseph, a servant in the Earnshaw house, whose sexual depravity electrifies Cathy.
“I was like, ‘If you asked me to shine your shoes, Emerald, I would do that,’” Mitchell says. “All of her characters are so vibrant and so nuanced, and there is such a vision you see in her films. She’s a one-of-a-kind, singular visionary. I’ve learned so much working with Emerald that I’ve taken forward in my career.” (Emily Zemler)
La Tribuna de Salamanca (Spain) lists several 2026 records you should revisit this summer:
"Wuthering Heights' (Warner), de Charlie XCX
Mientras muchos esperaban este viernes su nuevo disco de estudio, son otros muchos los que consideran que el mejor trabajo de la revolucionaria y joven compositora británica que aceleró el pop es la banda sonora que este mismo año publicó para la revisión cinematográfica de 'Cumbres borrascosas'. (Javier Herrero) (Translation) 
Olbia Punto (Italy) describes the new novel by Maria Laura Berlinguer, La Cena delle Anime, like this:
Si è svolto di recente, il primo appuntamento della XV edizione della rassegna letteraria "Liberamente Sopra le Righe" nell'accogliente Piazza Duomo di Telti. Protagonista della serata Maria Laura Berlinguer con il suo nuovo romanzo "La cena delle anime" - una saga familiare che narra di una tormentata storia d'amore in pieno stile "Cime Tempestose" ma dall'ambientazione tipicamente sarda. Un viaggio tra memoria, tradizioni e segreti nella Sardegna del Meilogu. (Ilaria Del Giudice) (Translation)

AnneBrontë.org publishes a post for the anniversary of Ellen Nussey's 1833 first visit to Haworth, built around her own vivid, decades-later recollections of the Brontë family, the parsonage, and a memorable moorland ramble with Emily and Anne.

3:31 am by M. in    No comments
 A jigsaw puzzle published by Penguin in the US:
By Jacqui Oakley
Clarkson Potter,
ISBN 9798217034550
July 21, 2026

This unique 500-piece jigsaw puzzle has a mystery at its heart! Read the clues and figure out the logic to build the final image, featuring timeless characters from Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Brontë’s greatest stories.
With characters from Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and more, The World of the Brontës: A Conversation Puzzle invites you to explore the worlds of Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Brontë and build a whole new story as you piece it together.
This 500-piece, 20″ x 27″ jigsaw puzzle is a unique experience for puzzle lovers. The pieces can be arranged in any order, but you have to read the conversations between characters in order to understand how the puzzle goes together.
First, put together the vignettes. Just like with any other puzzle, you use the visual clues to build each scene.
Then read the conversations in each vignette to help you solve the puzzle and put it together in the correct order. Each vignette has a similar border so you can’t just “see” how they fit together unless you read the clues.
To check your work, look at the back of the puzzle. If you’ve done it correctly you’ll reveal a quote from Charlotte Brontë herself!
See you favorite characters in a whole new light as you read the conversations and work to unravel the mystery of this delightful style of puzzle.

Sunday, July 19, 2026

Voice of Emirates (UAE) lists women's novels "that sparked controversy and brought about major transformations":
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë (1847)
Charlotte Brontë presented an independent heroine who refused to submit to social constraints, a bold proposition at the time. Despite initial criticism, the novel later became one of the most prominent and influential English novels.

Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë (1847)
The novel caused widespread shock due to its complex characters and gloomy atmosphere, but over time it has become one of the greatest romantic and psychological novels in world literature. (Medhat Elsheikh)
The Yorkshire Post publishes the frontal opposition of the Brontë Parsonage to the Calderdale Energy Park proposal:
Calderdale Energy Park: Brontë Parsonage 'totally opposed' to wind farm proposal
The director of Yorkshire’s Brontë Parsonage has said the group behind the museum is “totally opposed” to plans for the Calderdale Energy Park development.
Located in Haworth and previously home to the prolific family of writers, the Brontë Parsonage Museum is one of the region’s most well known attractions for tourists.
But according to the museum’s director, the proposed Calderdale Energy Park wind farm scheme could put tourist numbers at risk of dropping. The project would see the creation of around 34 wind turbines between Haworth and Hebden Bridge, standing at a maximum height of 200m.
In a statement given to The Yorkshire Post, Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, said: “The Brontë Society is totally opposed to Calderdale Energy Park.
“The location is environmentally sensitive, and we believe the development would have a significant and detrimental impact on an iconic local viewpoint and world-renowned landscape.
“People walk the moorland between Haworth and Hebden Bridge for reflection, inspiration and to understand how the natural surroundings influenced the Brontes’ work; it’s a unique place which allows the literary tourist to physically travel through the landscapes of the Brontës’ imaginations and the worlds of their novels and poetry.
“The Museum welcomes over 75,000 visitors each year and for many of them, the walk to Top Withins from Haworth is a form of pilgrimage: the connection between the landscape and literature cannot be ignored.” (Michael Crossland)
Deadline mourns the death of Joe Caldwell, co-creator of the character of Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows
The vampire saved the show from imminent cancelation, prompting a spike in ratings and a new direction away from a moody Jane Eyre-like gothic romance style to outright supernatural (if unintentionally campy) horror. (Greg Evans
The Illawarra Flame interviews the writer Shady Cosgrove:
Elizabeth Heffernan: What is one book that changed your life?
Shady Cosgrove: I can’t limit it to one! My life was transformed by Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.
Cookie-Cutter psychology advice in Cosmopolitan (Spain): 
Si vives tu amor en plan Heathcliff y Catherine en 'Cumbres Borrascosas', como una tormenta de arrebatos emocionales y montándote una película mental 24/7 y conviertes un 'crush' platónico en 'ups & downs' anímicos para que tu objeto de deseo te corresponda, toca pararse a reflexionar sobre dónde está la línea entre una relación sana y una obsesiva. (Rosa Alvares
The Sunday Times TV picks of the week include:
Britain’s Favourite Railway Stations (C4, 5pm)
The rerun More4 series chugs along, with Siddy Holloway taking a trip on West Yorkshire’s “Brontë line”, as seen in The Railway Children. Si King experiences the Snowdon Mountain Railway, and Damion Burrows extols the architecture of Wemyss Bay station. (John Dugdale)

Some more articles about The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever in Dublin and other places: The Irish TimesThe Journal, DPA Inernational... 

Livejournal user drush1891 reviews Wuthering Heights 1992. 

12:30 am by M. in    No comments
Twenty years ago, Cornelia Parker presented at the Brontë Parsonage Museum the exhibition Brontëan Abstracts. Now, some parts of the exhibition can be seen this summer in London:
3 Jul - 7 Aug 2026
Frith Street Gallery
17–18 Golden Square, London, W1F 9JJ

Multiple Narratives brings together works by eight gallery artists. The pieces are linked through their use of repetition, series and classification; some are narrative-driven, while others focus on visual exploration. Spanning drawing, sculpture, photography and found objects, the exhibition ranges from the minimal and abstract to the richly figurative.
The show includes Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press, Anna Barriball, Tacita Dean, Shilpa Gupta, Cornelia Parker, Raqs Media Collective, Thomas Schütte, and Dayanita Singh.

Adjacent is Parker’s Brontëan Abstracts (2006) – photographs of Charlotte Brontë’s original manuscripts for Jane Eyre which are held in the British Library. These images give us a direct insight into the immediacy of the progress of the celebrated novel. Here Parker invites the viewer to be present at the author’s elbow, we enter Brontë’s consciousness as she edits her masterpiece and become privy to her ideas as they emerge and recede. 

Saturday, July 18, 2026

The Clare Champion is excited about the visit of Ann Disndale to the Kilkee Brontë Festival:
One of the world's leading Brontë experts is to attend the 2026 Kilkee Bronte Festival, which will take place this coming weekend. 
Ann Dinsdale, principal curator at the Brontë Society and Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, England will be joining the festival in Kilkee, the place where Charlotte Bronte honeymooned, and where the Atlantic coast made such an impression on the famous author. 
Ms Dinsdale who has 36 years' experience caring for the museum's collection, organising exhibitions and working on important acquisitions will be making her first visit to the festival in Kilkee. 
Speaking to The Clare Champion this week, Ann said she is really excited to visit the West Clare seaside town, "I have been reading biographies about the Brontës for years - since I was a child really - so all these names of places in Ireland are really familiar to me.  (...) (Sharon Dolan D'Arcy)
ArtsHub recommends a visit to the Summer Show of the Frith Street Gallery - Golden Square in London:
Multiple Narratives brings together works by eight gallery artists. The pieces are linked through their use of repetition, series and classification, some are narrative-driven, while others focus on visual exploration. Spanning drawing, sculpture, photography and found objects, the exhibition ranges from the minimal and abstract to the richly figurative.
The show includes Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press, Anna Barriball, Tacita Dean, Shilpa Gupta, Cornelia Parker, Raqs Media Collective, Thomas Schütte, and Dayanita Singh. (...)
Progressing further into the gallery, the corner features two works by Cornelia Parker. White Cliff Crossings (2024) (...) [and]  [a]djacent is Parker’s Brontëan Abstracts (2006) – photographs of Charlotte Brontë’s original manuscripts for Jane Eyre which are held in the British Library. These images give us a direct insight into the immediacy of the progress of the celebrated novel. Here Parker invites the viewer to be present at the author’s elbow, we enter Brontë’s consciousness as she edits her masterpiece and become privy to her ideas as they emerge and recede.
A new installment of the Behind the Glass podcast is online:
Sam and Mia are joined by their colleague Murray, who is one of the Museum's curators! Before taking on the role, Murray worked at other Museums and historic houses and undertook a PhD specialising in architectural history.
In this episode, we ride the highs and lows of Britain's railways during the 1840s, looking at Branwell's time as a Railway Clerk and the investments the family made into this booming industry..
Collider is a bit extreme when listing Wuthering Heights 2026 among pointless movie remakes that have no reason to exist: 
Wuthering Heights is a novel that has never been perfectly adapted, as even the Best Picture-nominated 1939 classic was only based on half of Emily Brontë’s novel. Instead of taking the opportunity to make a more thorough adaption, Emerald Fennell reduced the material even further by cutting out major characters and inserting more raunchiness; this is a complete misreading of the source material, as it is the unfulfilled longing between Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) that is supposed to heighten the sexual tension. 
Fennell’s film casts actors who are far too old to realistically be playing their characters and uses shock value to visualize Catherine’s sexual awakening; the result is a film that feels made by someone who had only skimmed the novel and didn’t understand what it was actually trying to say about loss and love. (Liam Gaughan)
The Bromsgrove Standard reports a variation on the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever: 
The Synchro StingRays will be performing to three Kate Bush tracks in the water at Lakeside Adventures in Hartlebury tomorrow (Saturday, July 18).
That will be ahead of Kate Bush Day next Sunday, July 26.
StingRay choreographer and swim coach Ray Farr will then lead the official Wuthering Heights dance on land before inviting wannabe Kates into the lake to perform the dance there. (Tristan Harris)
Frank Miller describes Rebecca, his favourite Hitchcock, like this in New York Magazine's The Strategist:
 It’s classic Hitchcock, but not as a twist but as a pivotal, shocking revelation. When it first came out, I believe it was considered almost a poor man’s Wuthering Heights, but I think Rebecca actually was the more truly gothic one. It’s a masterpiece.
The Hollywood Reporter interviews Samantha Morton, who remembers her Jane Eyre in Jane Eyre 1997: 
David Canfield: How would you describe that interpretation? I’m curious how you conceive of this character, this scene, when he first presents you with the role, and how it then evolves once you start digging in.
Samantha Morton: I did a bit of research into the source material and I bought the Madeline Miller book [Circe]. But I opened that book and then something just stopped me from reading it. The thing about me and my work is, my relationship to a movie script or a play or a TV episode or whatever I’m doing — that’s my special thing. Research is incredibly important for me, but it also depends on who I’m playing. Years ago, I was about 19 years old and I was playing Jane Eyre. It was a big ITV production. It was a TV movie, but they’d spent a lot of money on it. I remember literally carrying the book around with me like the Bible, with passages highlighted and all my notes, and talking to the person who adapted it and going, “Why isn’t this there? This doesn’t make sense.” I was almost in conflict with the script, which was very good, because I had issues with the choices. I vowed to myself moving forward that, while you have to do your research, you have to know what you’re doing, I didn’t want to be bogged down by everybody else’s interpretation, view, opinion, anything. 
The Irish Independent interviews Maggie O'Farrell:
Aoife Rooney: Who would you most like to go for a pint with?
Maggie O'Farrell: I’d like to go for a pint with Charlotte Brontë. I think she’d be very interesting, and it’s probable that she died of extreme morning sickness, so I’d like to talk to her about that. I feel like we lost so many books because she died so young. I’ve also read that she had an Irish accent, and I would love to know if that was true. Her father was Irish and her mother died when she was young.
This is a recent Romanian scholarly book with Brontë-related content:
Mădălina Elena Mandici
ProUniversitaria
ISBN: 978-606-26-1773-8
2023

In this study, the investigative focus is given by the typological analysis of the female reader postulated by three Victorian novelists – Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë and George Eliot – in Jane Eyre (1847), Wuthering Heights (1847), Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Middlemarch (1871-1872). The act of reading performed by fictional women in the English novel of the Victorian period undoubtedly requires clarifications and delimitations. The internal chronology of the texts places the biography of the female reader in the five emblematic mother texts for the Victorian period in a broader historical, cultural, educational and social process that involves, in 19th century England, the proliferation of books of all kinds, the diversification of the reading public, the relativization of the taste for reading, but also the polyvalence of the types of pleasure and instruction offered by it. The central intention of the book is, therefore, to formulate a comprehensive description of the notion of "reading", revolutionized in the Victorian era, when the author-book-reader relationship became impossible to account for, and the female audience became increasingly refined.
The book is addressed not only to English scholars, but – thanks to the exegetical methodology used – also to the general, non-specialized public. What new breath can be added to iconic figures of 19th-century English literature and to the female characters created by the pens of the novelists of the time, already turned on all sides? The answer represents an opportune occasion for this work to bring into discussion, through a reader-oriented analysis, the function of reading (active, productive, ultimately propelling the recipient's desire to write and rewrite any complex phenomenon that wins the approval of the text label) – on the scene of identity changes – in the life of the woman-reader/intellectual/educated and, by extension, in the psycho-cultural destiny of the woman who reads, a woman attested historically and culturally. In the Western world, the methodological interest in the act of reading (performed by fictional and historically attested women alike) has reached, in recent decades, countless nuances and refinements. Since the interest in the female reader as represented in the Victorian novel is quite weak in the native space, the indirect aim of the work to contribute to the enrichment of the poetics of reading cannot be ignored either. The choice of the five reading examples discussed at length in the work is not at all arbitrary. In the complex game of reading within the five novels, we can discover the expansion of the English textual consciousness (in the sense of cultural anthropologists): each text refers ad infinitum to other texts, forcing the external reader to (re)read both the mother text and the embedded texts belonging to the predecessors. The ultimate goal of the woman-reader's reading is, as each bundle of hypotheses advanced in the last three sections of the book will indicate, self-reading – the scrutiny of the self through new forms of self-knowledge and legibility.
The book contains the following chapters:
The Governess and Textual Reinterpretation: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
Readers on a Social Spectrum in Wuthering Heights

Friday, July 17, 2026

Sesaya Arts Magazine has an article about the actress Lara Lucia, who plays Anne Brontë in the ongoing The Brontës. The World Without production in Scarborough, Ontario:
Lucia plays Anne Brontë, alongside Laura Del Papa and Hilary Scott as sisters Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Told over five days spanning three years, the play unfolds entirely within the Brontë family home, and offers an intimate and unflinching account of the sisters’ artistic ambitions, their pseudonymous path to publication, and the sisterhood that carried them through both. The play illuminates how their experiences echo those of the heroines who live on in their beloved and much interpreted literary classics, including Jane Eyre, Villette, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Wuthering Heights, not to mention the mythology surrounding the sisters themselves. 
Lucia came to the material with little prior knowledge of the Brontës. “I did all of that research over my audition” — but was quickly won over. What drew her in was not the sisters’ literary genius, so much as [Jordi] Mand’s insistence on their humanity. “They are geniuses. Of course they are. But they’re also real human people, with real human thoughts and struggles and doubts,” she says. That balance is especially pointed for Anne, who is usually overlooked because she lacks a towering masterwork like Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights to her credit. Lucia found in the role of Anne a portrait richer than the historical record allows: “Jordi does such a beautiful job at bringing her dimension,” she says. “Even though she is the forgotten Brontë sister, she is anything but forgotten in this play.” (Arpita Ghosal)
The wonders of Yorkshire in The Telegraph:
As England’s largest county, you can expect Yorkshire to be a bit exceptional. It is England in miniature: high fells and moorland for wild walking; soft green valleys for timeless villages and sparkling rivers (waterfalls, too); a bracing coastline for family beaches and fossil-hunting; and rolling farmland dotted with romantic ruined abbeys and sprawling stately homes.
Add to the mix a lively dollop of culture – a 500-acre sculpture park, David Hockney, moody Brontë country, museums covering everything from the quaint (toys) to the spectacular (trains) – plus one-off Yorkshire experiences such as steaming across the moors in vintage railway carriages, and everyone should be happy. (Helen Pickles)
Isabella Blow’s niece, Harriet Verney, shares an intimate look at the legendary fashion editor  in The Times:
But really she was Boudica. Issy had walked out into the fields in those kitten heels and that full look in some kind of Brontë-esque suicide attempt in the rolling hills of Hilles
The Economic Times (India) calls the usual suspects to talk about Haworth and the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
Stepping inside Haworth feels like turning a page from a classic English novel. Not long ago, digital creator and travel vlogger Farida dropped a video on Instagram, offering glimpses of the charming village. Cobbled streets, stone cottages, rustic bookshops, hazy lamposts and cosy tea rooms dominate the region, where every nook and corner feels like you have stepped back in time. One can also enter the Gothic churches that feel hauntingly beautiful.
Literary enthusiasts can visit the famous Brontë Parsonage Museum, where one can witness Emily's mahogany writing desk and Charlotte’s rare miniature books, original manuscripts, and personal letters. Visitors can stand in the dining room where Wuthering Heights was penned, surrounded by the family’s original furniture, clothes, and hauntingly preserved Victorian rooms.
Those looking for some adventure can hike through the wild moorlands to the atmospheric ruins of Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse widely believed to be the setting that inspired the desolate Earnshaw home in Emily Brontë's novel. Continuing with the vintage journey, you can board an authentic steam train on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway. This 5-mile heritage line winds directly through Brontë country, stopping at Haworth’s beautifully restored Edwardian station. (Trisha Dey)
Ginger Nuts of Horror interviews the author Kelly Creogh:
Kelly Creagh named one of her dogs Annabel, after the dead girl in Poe’s last great poem, which tells you roughly everything about where her imagination has spent the last fifteen years. The Nevermore trilogy dragged a cheerleader into Poe’s dreamworld. Phantom Heart rebuilt Leroux’s opera house as a teenage nightmare. Strange Unearthly Things sent three psychics into a Jane Eyre that bled. Across all of it, Creagh borrowed dead authors’ scaffolding to write about grief, duality, and the self we keep in shadow. (Jim McLeod)
The Irish Independent channels John Lennon when he imagines a world without Donald Trump. You know, it's easy if you try
There’s a pivotal scene in Wuthering Heights where Heathcliff overhears part of a conversation – the bad part – between his beloved Cathy and the servant Nelly Dean, but has fled in a rage by the time she’s saying the good part.
Luckily, some of us are not so hot-headed. Last Sunday morning, after buying my copy of the Sunday Independent, I sat into my car and turned on The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk just as Kenny was introducing the items on his show. These were the first words I heard him saying: “President Trump has died suddenly.”
Now, if I had done a Heathcliff on it, I would of course have been devastated to hear this news, given what a great job Donald Trump is doing. I would have been inconsolable at the loss of his enlightened leadership. I might even have switched off the radio and wept.
For about five seconds, my head was spinning at the incalculable significance of this news. Forget about a clunky plot device in Wuthering Heights. Whole movies have been made about such moments, as a character’s life flashes in front of him – a process that spins out for about two hours in the cinema.
But something told me that I had only heard the “bad” part, as it were. That there was perhaps more to this than the statement I’d heard from Kenny.
Indeed, given the president’s many enemies, one might have expected that the celebrations of his sudden death would have started already. That cars would already be tearing down the street with their horns blaring at the “good” of it all.
Sure enough, the Newstalk “listen back” facility revealed that Kenny’s full sentence went like this: “Lindsey Graham, sometime foe but then staunch ally of President Trump, has died suddenly.” (Declan Lynch)
Broadway World reviews the Festival d'Avignon performances of the Trilogia Cadela Força by Carolina Bianchi and Cara de Cavalo:
Poets and artists, living and dead, populate the trilogy. Bianchi is not settling scores so much as searching for her place among them. What is poetry in the face of violence, not violence as metaphor, but violence as lived experience? Some figures, particularly the grand metteurs en scène who occupy the pantheon of the Festival d'Avignon, are treated with satirical irreverence while remaining, despite everything, aspirational. Others (Sarah Kane, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson) become something like secular saints. Bianchi inhabits their characters, weeps before their portraits as though before religious icons, and clings to their writings like relics. (Wesley Doucette)
The Economist reviews Fiona Sampson's new George Sand biography, Becoming George:
Nevertheless, some readers may still be tempted to pick up a copy of “Indiana”, “Lélia” or “Mauprat” after they have finished “Becoming George”. For Ms Sampson lays out just how many admirers Sand had, including the Brontë sisters, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Marcel Proust. Gustave Flaubert, who exchanged letters with Sand for many years, addressed his fellow writer as chère maître (dear master). 
More local Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever articles: Bristol 24/7, The Lismore App, BBC BedfordThe Echo (Australia)...

Finally, an alert for today, July 17, in Boulder, CO:
Friday, Jul 17 2026, 2:00pm - 4:00pm
Community Room (2nd Floor), NoBo Library

Do you love the Brontës? Would you like to learn more about them and discuss them with fellow enthusiasts? Come celebrate our favorite literary sisters with light refreshments, trivia, crafts, and more! Period dress and/or fantastic hats encouraged but optional. 
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A couple of Haworth Festival alerts for tomorrow, July 18:
Sat 18 Jul, 2:00pm
Brontë Event Space at the Old School Room, Haworth

Join us for a deliciously gothic event with Dr Alessandra Pino, co-author of A Gothic Cookbook. Alessandra’s book digs into food themes and motifs in a series of classic and contemporary novels from the 19th century to the present day. We will be looking into how gothic food manifests into the Brontës novels, what it might mean and how some of the adaptations portray food.
Alessandra is an expert on the intersections of the Gothic, food, and cultural memory. She worked with a Michelin-starred chef for nearly ten years before moving to academia, researching and publishing on food, cultural memory, the supernatural and the Gothic.
Sat Jul 18th 4:00pm - 5:00pm
The Old School Room

Join Dr Claire O’Callaghan & Dr Michael Stewart as they dismantle the myths that have long obscured Emily Brontë’s life and art, revealing a bold, passionate, and politically attuned writer whose work still resonates today. Rediscover Emily Brontë for our times.
Emily Brontë is one of our best-known writers, but also one of the most enigmatic. Her only novel, Wuthering Heights, has been adapted across all media forms. The latest film adaptation, directed by Emerald Fennell, and starring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie, is yet another interpretation.
Dr Claire O’Callaghan’s Emily Brontë Reappraised brings new insight into how we read and remember one of literature’s most enigmatic writers. It has just been re-published in a new expanded form. Dr Michael Stewart is the multi-award-winning author of nine books, including, Walking the Invisible: Following in the Footsteps of the Brontës, and Ill Will: The Untold Story of Heathcliff. He is also the curator of the Brontë Stones and the director of the Brontë Writing Centre.

Thursday, July 16, 2026

Thursday, July 16, 2026 7:00 am by M. in , , , ,    No comments
The Week recommends "punchy" books you can finish in a day:
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Rhys’ “chilling, dreamlike” prequel to “Jane Eyre” explores another side to Charlotte Brontë’s “madwoman in the attic”, said Adrienne Westenfeld in Esquire. We meet the white Creole heiress, Antoinette Cosway, in Jamaica years before the events of Thornfield Hall. Isolated and lonely, she is soon “driven to despair” by the cruelty of her new husband Edward Rochester. Rhys’ book is just 176 pages long; packed with “gorgeous imagery and turbulent emotions”, it will roll over you like a “hazy island fever dream”. (Irenie Forshaw)
The Cyprus Mail announces a new production of the Greek adaptation of Wuthering Heights by Yannis Kalavrianos to be staged this Autumn in Nicosia:
Under the direction of Achilleas Grammatikopoulos, Emily Brontë’s timeless tale of passion and revenge, Wuthering Heights, will arrive at Thoc’s Main Stage this autumn alongside a third Main Stage production which is yet to be announced.
The Christian Science Monitor lists some epic movies coming from epic literature:
“Carrie” – No, not the Sissy Spacek shocker, but William Wyler’s deeply affecting and little known 1952 adaption of Theodore Dreiser’s “Sister Carrie.” As the wealthy married man whom Carrie, the small-town girl played by Jennifer Jones, falls for, Laurence Olivier gives perhaps his best unheralded performance. Olivier always credited Wyler, who starred him as Heathcliff in “Wuthering Heights” years before, with teaching him how to act for the screen. (Peter Rainer)
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A new production of Jane Eyre. The Musical opens tomorrow, July 17, in Cleburne, TX:
Book by John Caird
Music and Lyrics by Paul Gordon
Additional Lyrics by John Caird
July 17 - August 8, 2026
Plaza Theatre Company at Dudley Hall
305 S. Anglin St., Cleburne, TX 76031

With Addisen Bairrington, Nathan McCarthy

Based on the classic novel by Charlotte Brontë, this haunting and romantic musical follows the journey' of Jane Eyre, an orphaned young woman who overcomes hardship and heartache to find her own voice and true love. With a richly atmospheric score and deeply emotional storytelling, it's a sweeping tale of resilience, passion, and the enduring strength of the human spirit.
Check the Instagram account @plazatheatre for more information.
An exhibition at the Brontë Birthplace in Thornton:
Friday 17 July – Monday 7 September

This summer, the Brontë Birthplace is delighted to welcome Annie Lancaster and Kevin Jones as our shared Artists in Residence. Across eight inspiring weeks, Annie and Kevin will bring their creative practices into dialogue with the house, its history, and the imaginative legacy of the Brontës.
Their work will be displayed throughout the Birthplace, transforming familiar rooms into intimate gallery spaces. Visitors can explore pieces in the Posh Parlour, the Scullery, and other corners of the house, each offering a different glimpse into their artistic worlds.

Over the summer Annie & Kevin will be joining us for a series of special events:

Friday 17th July, 6pm Private View
Join us for the opening night of the exhibition, meet the artists and mingle at the Birthplace. Refreshments included!

Saturday 8th August  & Saturday August 15th 11am – 4pm Meet the Artist 
Drop into the Birthplace to meet Annie & Kevin, learn more about their practice and see demontstrations of their work. Entrance included with a standard entry ticket.

Wednesday 26th August 10 – 12:30pm – Slow Stitch Embroidery Workshop 
Join Annie for a Bronte inspired embroidery workshop inside the Birthplace – ticket details to come.
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A new edition of the Kilkee Brontë Festival takes place this weekend:
July 17-19, 2026
Cultúrlann Sweeney Theatre 
Dough, Co. Clare, V15 P960, Ireland

This year’s festival will welcome leading Brontë experts to Kilkee for a weekend exploring the family’s Irish roots, its often-overlooked family members, its portrayal on screen, and the homes and buildings that shaped the Brontës’ lives. The programme also includes a watercolour workshop, a participatory dance event and a guided Brontë tour of Kilkee.

Friday, 17 July
Opening Ceremony 

The festival will officially open at 6.45pm on Friday 17 July, followed at 7pm by a talk from Ann Dinsdale about her work and contribution to the production of the celebrated BBC film To Walk Invisible. Written and directed by award-winning writer Sally Wainwright, the drama explores the relationship between Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë and their troubled brother, Branwell. Individual talks are priced at €10, while a weekend pass costing €30 includes all four talks across Friday and Saturday. The film screening is free, and the watercolour workshop costs €30.

Saturday, 18 July
2pm: The Mother of the Brontës | Sharon Wright

At 2pm, award-winning journalist, playwright and author Sharon Wright will give a talk about Maria Branwell Brontë, the often-overlooked mother of Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell. Sharon is the author of the historical biography The Mother of the Brontës. She writes for national newspapers and magazines and, in 2024, successfully campaigned for the correction of the Brontë memorial in Westminster Abbey.

3.30pm: The Brontës in Ireland or Facts are Stranger than Fiction | Uel Wright

At 3.30pm, Uel Wright will present The Brontës in Ireland,; Facts Are Stranger Than Fiction.
His talk will draw on the influential book compiled by his great-great-uncle, William Wright, from oral histories concerning the Brontë family’s Irish ancestry. The audience will be taken into the early life and family background of Patrick Brontë, who was born in County Down, and will hear how the family’s Irish heritage may have influenced the imaginations and writing of his famous children.

5pm: The Brontës in bricks and mortar | Ann Dinsdale and Sharon Wright

At 5pm, Ann Dinsdale and Sharon Wright will come together to discuss their recent joint publication, Let Me In: The Brontës in Bricks and Mortar.
The book explores the houses, buildings and places connected with the Brontë family and examines what later happened to these important locations.
It has been described by Professor Kathryn Sutherland as “personal and poetic, authoritative and richly evocative”, while novelist Stacey Halls praised it as being “full of insight, compassion and exciting new discoveries”.The authors’ discussion will be followed by questions from the audience.

7.30pm Participatory dance event. Further details will be announced shortly.

Sunday, 19 July

The festival concludes on Sunday afternoon with a guided Brontë tour of Kilkee, exploring Charlotte Brontë’s honeymoon visit to the town and the landscape she so greatly admired.

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

The Brontë Society voices objections to windfarm proposals in The Telegraph & Argus and Keighley News:
The Bronte Society’s response was given to the recent statutory consultation CEP held on the proposals.
The society said while they have a commitment to environmental sustainability and renewable energy, they “are strongly opposed to this development” with concerns about the Preliminary Environmental Information Report (PEIR) – a key document in the consultation on the impact of the development on moorland.
Reporting details of objections on the Parsonage Museum’s social media, they said: “The PEIR does not contain the baseline evidence for any assessment of the effect on Bronte heritage of the proposal and simply claims that ‘effects on the Bronte-related landscape are minor and not significant.’
“We strongly dispute this claim: the moorland between Haworth and Hebden Bridge allows the literary tourist to physically travel through the landscapes of the Brontes’ imaginations and the worlds of their novels and poetry.
“This link between the Bronte texts and the surrounding landscape was noted by Virginia Woolf when she visited Haworth in 1904:
” ‘I do not know whether pilgrimages to the shrines of famous men ought not to be condemned as sentimental journeys.
“‘It is better to read Carlyle in your own study chair than to visit the sound-proof room and pore over the manuscripts at Chelsea.
“‘The curiosity is only legitimate when the house of a great writer or the country in which it is set adds something to our understanding of his books.
“This justification you have for a pilgrimage to the home and country of Charlotte Brontë and her sisters.'”
“Woolf, along with the 70,000 visitors who visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum from across the world each year, clearly understood the inseparable connection between the local landscape and the Brontës, a connection which cannot be dismissed,” said the society. (John Greenwood)
Collider praises Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-García:
'The Last of Us' Meets 'Wuthering Heights' in This Near-Perfect Gothic Book. (...)
Gothic novels will always be popular. Some of literature's all-time greatest efforts belong to the Gothic genre, from the seminal horror of Dracula to the timeless romance of Jane Eyre. (...)
As the title implies, Mexican Gothic borrows from the rich tradition of Gothic stories to a T. There's a large, tetric manor, High Place, haunted by the ghosts of generations past and very much modeled after the genre's best-known mansions: think of Wuthering Heights, Thornfield Hall, or Manderley. (...)
The Gothic genre has always dealt with themes of class and status. In classics like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, class plays a major role in the central romances between Heathcliff and Cathy and Jane and Mr. Rochester. The differences in standing, background, and prospects complicate the relationship between these couples, allowing the Brontë sisters to provide some very sharp observations that remain relevant almost two centuries later. (David Caballero)
Araminta Hall, the author of Unrealable Narrator, fittingly chooses her favourite novels with unreliable narrators for CrimeReads:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
 Emily Bronte made a very interesting choice when choosing the narrators of this novel and it has always felt like one of the most important aspects of the story to me. Cathy’s servant Nelly Dean tells the story, but it is written down by Mr Lockwood who is renting the house where Cathy once lived. Both arrive with their own biases, Nelly because she was once from the same class as Cathy and then became her servant, and Lockwood, who feels outside the long established families who rule this part of the Yorkshire moors.
The layers of unreliability run throughout, Nelly often not hearing or knowing everything that happened between Cathy and Heathcliffe and Lockwood often interpreting. And the brilliance of this lies in the fact that Wuthering Heights is a novel about being an outsider, so who better to tell it than two outsiders with their own scores to settle, just like Heathcliff.
The Statesman quotes Jane Eyre in an article about gerontocracy:
Old men may remember what Charlotte Brontë wrote: “I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.” (Devendra Saksena)
The Yorkshire Evening Post lists villages near Leeds "perfect for a Yorkshire walk in nature":
 Haworth, West Yorkshire
Over in Bradford, Haworth is a beauty spot best-known as the home of the Brontë sisters. The Yorkshire Moors that surround the village can be seen both in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. (Jennifer Cartwright)
Several newspapers announce local editions of the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever: Wagga Wagga Council News, The Press (New Zealand), RTÉ (Ireland), The Stratford Observer

Libreriamo (Italy) devotes a piece to the poem To Imagination by Emily Brontë. Britain on Page and Screen posts about some locations of Wuthering Heights 2026.
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A new production of Jordi Mand's Brontë: The World Without in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada:
by Jordi Mand
Directed by Helen Juvonen
Jul 16, 2026 - Aug 2, 2026
Guild Festival Theatre, 201 Guildwood Pkwy, Scarborough, ON M1E, Canada,

Brontë: The World Without offers a glimpse into the lives of the three famous sisters, ​presenting an intimate look at their relationships, their artistic struggles, the pressure of family responsibilities, and the sisterhood that helped them achieve greatness. The play illuminates how their experiences echo those of the heroines who live on in their beloved and unforgettable novels such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. 
A must-see for Brontë fans, Brontë: The World Without is an unflinching portrait of family, artistry, and what it means to strive for success in a world that often denies women the right to dream. 
This play is based on the real lives of the Brontë sisters, which includes references to real events in their lives, such as mentions of death, suicide, and substance abuse. Please visit the box office if you would like more details on the content of the show.
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Two Brontë alerts. One in Haworth and the other in Banagher, Ireland:
Bradford Heritage Festival
Brontë Parsonage Museum
Thu 16 Jul 11:00am /2:00pm

The year is 1848. 
Join Tabbitha Ackroyd (Brontë servant and confidante) and John Brown (grave digger and tippler) for their tour of Haworth. See the sights and get the gossip. Be introduced to doctors and lady novelists, maiden aunts and sewage inspectors. Keep your eyes peeled and you might spot a Brontë…
This event brings history to life through characters and stories the Brontës knew. 
It is an outside promenade performance beginning at the Brontë Parsonage Museum and taking place in the churchyard and the top of Main Street. 
This performance will last approximately 50 mins and is suitable for all ages.
The Banagher Brontë Group is holding a social gathering on Thursday week, July 16, in Corrigan's Corner Pub at 9pm.
The evening will begin with a special showing of 'Arthur & Charlotte: A Victorian Romance Remembered' which was performed in Tullamore in December 2019 by the Banagher Martello Tower Players.
The performance, which relates the romance between Arthur Bell Nicholls and his wife Charlotte Brontë, was filmed by Maebh O' Regan and features many well known Banagher faces.
Two eminent Brontë scholars, Ann Dinsdale and Sharon Wright will be in attendance as they are paying a short visit to Banagher en route to the Killkee Brontë Festival the following weekend.
A few more details from the Banagher Bronté Group News section:
Last call for this coming Friday night’s Banagher Brontë Group annual quiz in Seán Corrigan’s Corner Pub at 9 p.m.
Ray Flannery has prepared an array of interesting, humorous and challenging questions so it will be a night to enjoy.
Tables for teams of four are €40 each.
Many thanks to Nigel West who has donated a print of the Thornton Brontë Birthplace, value €125 for our raffle.

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

The Guardian talks about the community free-enter scheme in Chatsworth House:
When Kate, a 47-year-old contract worker came face to face with Charlotte Brontë’s handwriting while visiting Chatsworth House, the avid reader, who counts Jane Eyre as her favourite book, struggled to contain her excitement.
“I had a little bit of a moment,” she said. “I just thought: ‘Wow, that was actually Charlotte Brontë’s writing there on that page.’ That was pretty special.” (Aamna Mohdin)
She refers to the exhibition House of Stories: Tales from the Chatsworth Library (21 March 2026 –4 October 2026), where a letter from Charlotte Brontë to Elizabeth Gaskell (August 27th, 1850) is displayed. The letter is preserved at Chatsworth Library and has a curious history:
That sense of personal connection appears again in a letter from Elizabeth Gaskell to the 6th Duke of Devonshire, written after her visit to Chatsworth in 1857.
In it, she thanks the Duke for his hospitality and encloses as a gift a letter she had received from Charlotte Brontë, which she described as the most interesting she had ever received from her. It was not something she would have parted with lightly.
More on that visit and why the Duke of Devonshire could be interested in a letter by Charlotte Brontë:
We can only speculate on what they discussed, but the Duke had strong literary interests and only the previous month had made a visit to see Patrick Brontë in Haworth. Gaskell’s famous biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë had appeared earlier in 1857. It was received with much praise, but Gaskell also faced a barrage of complaints from people who felt they had been misrepresented in the book – and in two cases legal action was threatened. She had therefore spent a stressful summer revising it for a new, third edition.
From the outset, her biography provoked fascination with the lives of Charlotte Brontë and her sisters, and in subsequent years more and more literary tourists made the journey to Haworth to see where they had lived and written their novels. It seems the Duke of Devonshire was amongst the earliest of these literary pilgrims – probably prompted by Gaskell’s book.
The morning after their dinner, Gaskell sat down in her room to write the letter in which she so vividly described her visit, using ‘a delicious pen’. She confessed that she had no idea where she was supposed to go for breakfast ‘in this wilderness of a palace of a house’.
However, she and Meta successfully made their way home in the end, and Gaskell wrote a thank-you letter to the Duke for his hospitality; she also thanked him for his ‘sympathizing words’, suggesting she confided in him some of the troubles she had experienced over her biography of Charlotte Brontë. Enclosed with the letter was a precious gift for the Duke: ‘I have the greatest pleasure in the world in sending you the enclosed letter from Charlotte Brontë to me [which] I have chosen out as being, in my opinion, the most interesting I ever received from her, and consequently the one I like best to offer to your Grace.’
The first novel of Marian Yee, 4 Janes, is discussed in The Brookline News:
4 Janes” is a reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel “Jane Eyre.” In this version there are four different parallel lives that the titular character might have had if she had taken another path. These alternate possibilities span space and time taking Jane to India, Burma (now Myanmar) and Vietnam. Over the wider geography, each thread remains rooted in the original character’s maternal love and grief. 
While the literary classic takes place on the weather-torn moors of Northern England, the inspiration for “4 Janes” was born on a trip to Vietnam. In Huế, a city in the center of the country, Yee and her husband came across a bookstall where the shopkeeper was intently focused on a novel. 
“What was so interesting was that she was reading an abridged copy of ‘Jane Eyre’ to teach herself English,” says Yee. “I was so interested in that very unexpected juxtaposition, because Jane Eyre is this iconic Western classic and I didn’t expect to see it in central Vietnam in this context.” 
From there, the possibilities seemed endless. By resetting the novel within a global framework, Yee is able to examine the complex history between East and West as well as the internal turmoil experienced by Jane. (...)
 The early feminist angle of “Jane Eyre” also makes it primed for reinterpretation. 
“People often think of her as a kind of a proto-feminist before feminism as a term came up,” says Yee. “She’s this very resilient, very strong, very courageous person and she’s had a difficult life but she manages to overcome her difficulties through her own intelligence and her wits.”  (...)
Yee hopes her novel inspires readers to pick up the original “Jane Eyre” and to explore the themes of empowerment that extend through both books. They serve as a reminder that classical literature, including Brontë’s novel, still have much to teach modern audiences. 
Yee says, “I hope readers take away the inspiration of a heroine who learns to rely on herself, regains independence, learns resilience, respects herself and her decisions and takes life on her own terms, including her love life.” (Celina Colby)
New Humanist meets novelists exploring "sexual fantasies of midlife women":
Even Cathy, the teenage heroine of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has been recast as mid-30s Margot Robbie in a lust-fest fever dream directed by 40-year-old Emerald Fennell. (Nicola Cutcher)
Expansión (Spain) recaps the Brontë story with particular focus on talent recognition:
Durante años hemos repetido casi automáticamente que falta talento. Sin embargo, el informe Hidden Workers elaborado por Joseph Fuller y su equipo en Harvard Business School plantea preguntas incómodas: ¿y si el problema no fuera la ausencia de talento, sino nuestra incapacidad para reconocerlo? ¿Y si nuestros propios procesos de selección, promoción y desarrollo estuvieran dejando fuera a personas perfectamente capaces de aportar valor simplemente porque no responden al perfil esperado? Las hermanas Brontë nos recuerdan que el talento necesita disciplina, curiosidad y trabajo. Pero también ecosistemas donde crecer, personas que crean en él y líderes capaces de mirar más allá de los prejuicios. (Adela Balderas) (Translation)
La Razón (Spain) centers on Charlotte Brontë's biography and how her work, particularly Jane Eyre, reflects it. Pity, the umlaut is in the wrong place.
Releyendo estos días «Jane Eyre», uno de esos novelones a los que el tiempo no consigue envejecer, no puedo evitar evocar la figura de su autora, Charlotte Brontë. Saber quién fue, asomarse a su vida y conocer las heridas que la acompañaron permite regresar a sus páginas con otros ojos. Charlotte Brontë medía poco más de metro cuarenta; sus vestidos, guantes y zapatos conservados hoy en Haworth parecen casi los de una niña. Pero dentro de aquel cuerpo diminuto había una voz que la Inglaterra victoriana no estaba preparada para escuchar. (...) (José María Zavala) (Translation)

The Economic Times (India) announces the OTT release of Wuthering Heights 2026 in India. BookClub publishes an AI article about novels everyone knows, and few people read; the LLM model includes Jane Eyre in the list.